


In Our Bedroom, After The War

by Roadie



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, Cancer, F/F, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-30
Updated: 2013-09-30
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:01:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadie/pseuds/Roadie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So you figured you’d just wander in and have a look-see, right? See if you could catch a peek at what happened here while you were busy dropping your kid at preschool in frakking nowhere, Wisconsin?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Our Bedroom, After The War

**Author's Note:**

> I was reading prompts for this year's Femslash Kink meme and saw one for HG/Claudia, angry sex. My first thought was "how on earth would that ever happen?" And then I answered my own question with this angst-monster of a story idea built around Myka, which wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it. And now I'm publishing it because that will keep me from continuing to fiddle with it.
> 
> My descriptions are taken directly from my experiences as a caregiver for a handful of friends/relatives who have died from cancer in home hospice setups. None of them had ovarian cancer, though, so I apologize if my writing is inaccurate on that front.
> 
> No beta. Title pilfered from the song of the same name by Stars.

“Well, look at what the cat dragged in.”

Helena jolted at the voice and spun around, hand instinctively reaching for a Tesla she hadn’t carried in years. Some distant part of her brain wondered whether it was more strange or comforting that returning to a place from one’s past could revive outdated habits and instincts.

In the doorway to the library, propped against the frame, stood a person who embodied both the distant and the familiar.

“Claudia.”

Before that morning, Helena hadn’t seen Claudia Donovan in half a decade. Looking at her now, her transformation was subtle, but striking to an eye that had last known her best as a teenager. She would be… Helena did the math quickly in her head. Twenty-six years old, now? Claudia’s hair, the same shade of red it had always been, hung longer, in layers below her shoulders; the streaks of colour she had previously favoured were gone. Her clothes—black dress pants, a green v-neck sweater, and black leather boots that Helena immediately recognized as belonging to Myka—were more conservative than she had preferred in the past.

Of course, given the events of the day, Claudia’s outfit probably didn’t reflect her day-to-day clothing choices.

“You’ve got a lot of frakking nerve, just walking in here like this,” Claudia spat, a slight sneer curling her lip.

A frown quirked the side of Helena’s mouth. “Yes, you’re. . . you’re right.” Claudia’s eyes bore into hers until she dropped her gaze to the wooden floor beneath her boots.

Helena took a breath. “After the service, I thought I’d stop by to visit. Then when I got here, there were there weren’t any cars in the driveway. But the door was unlocked, so I—“

“So you figured you’d just wander in and have a look-see, right? See if you could catch a peek at what happened here while you were busy dropping your kid at preschool in fucking nowhere, Wisconsin? Well, my car was parked around back.” Claudia’s voice dripped with… something. Ire? Resignation? Helena couldn’t quiet tell, but her voice was low, confident, conspicuously restrained.

Helena drew in a deep breath through her nose and reached for her locket, keeping her gaze downcast. And suddenly Claudia, who had remained very still in the doorway, took two long strides and was beside her, grabbing her by the shoulders and spinning her body around to face back into the library.

“Look,” Claudia said, firmly. Helena didn’t move fast enough. “Look!” Claudia snarled, grabbing the sides of Helena’s head with both of her hands and forcibly lifting her gaze. Helena had already seen the rumpled hospital bed when she’d first walked into the room, but she stared at it again now: the pillow still indented where a head had rested until just a few days previously. The height-adjustable rolling table with a dozen prescription bottles clustered on one end. The wheelchair. The IV stand, empty now.

Claudia’s grip remained firm on the sides of Helena’s head, and Helena felt her step closer until they were almost, but not quite, pressed back-to-front. Claudia’s face appeared in her peripheral vision, over her left shoulder.

“That’s where she died, HG,” Claudia said, quietly, with a slight tip of her chin pointing to the bed. “The hospice said they could set her up in her own room upstairs, but she didn’t want that to be her legacy in the dead agents’ vault. Plus, she said, we’d have a hell of a time explaining why we couldn’t give the hospice their bed back. So fucking pragmatic, all the way to the end.”

Helena smiled a little at that, but then roughly her head was turned, still in Claudia’s grip, to face the sofa in the back corner. It, too, was made up with rumpled sheets and a pillow.

“One of us slept there every night for two weeks before she died,” Claudia said. “The last few days, she slept a lot and when she’d wake up, she’d be disoriented. So one of us would always _be here_ —“ she growled the words like a curse and shook Helena slightly, twice, in time with their rhythm “—to calm her down, coax her back to sleep.”

Helena took another deep, shuddering breath, and forced her eyes to stay open, forced her gaze to linger on the couch and its worn cushions.

“I’m so sorry, Claudia, I wish—“

_“Shut up.”_

Helena had never, never heard such venom in the voice of young Claudia Donovan. Claudia shifted behind her, her face moving from the left to the right side of her head, and Helena flinched, just a little.

“It was me, the last night,” Claudia said. “She woke up once and she—she called out for you.”

Helena let her eyes drift closed at that, just for a moment. “For me.“

“Yeah, for you, HG. And you know what I did? I held her hand, and I stroked her face, and I told her you were on your way. I told her you would get here—get here soon.” Her voice finally cracked a little, and out of the corner of her eye, Helena could see Claudia’s eyes reddening, welling a little with unshed tears. “She went back to sleep. I lay down again, but—but there was no way. Maybe an hour later, I heard noises upstairs. Doors. And Myka, at that point she was breathing so slowly and the noise didn’t wake her up. And then Pete came flying down the stairs and he was crying a little—fucking _Pete_ was _crying_ —and he went ‘I got a vibe, Claudia. I woke everyone and they’re coming down.’”

Helena felt her heart-rate rising, her breath coming in shorter and shallower gasps. “Claudia,” she whispered, shakily, raising one hand to cover one of the hands still clutching the sides of her head, “I didn’t know—“

Suddenly Helena found herself spun around and shoved backward until her back pressed up against the bookshelves, Claudia’s hand fisted in the collar of her shirt. Helena had always thought of Claudia as shorter than she. She always seemed that way, in the past. But now, with Claudia’s full height and strength and anger pressing into her, she remembered that she and Claudia were, essentially, of a height—and with those boots, Claudia was actually taller.

“Let me tell you what I know, Helena,” she breathed. There was a glint in her eye that spoke ever-so-slightly of the kind of madness that can only grow from the appropriate mix of anger and grief; an affect with which Helena was only too frighteningly, intimately familiar.

“What I know,” Claudia continued, “is that everyone who loved her most was in the room with her when she died. Pete, Artie, Steve, Abigail, her parents, her sister, me, _everyone,_ ” she barked louder when Helena closed her eyes again, “except the last person she asked to see.”

Something inside Helena finally cracked. Calling up muscle memory long unused, she grasped the fist clutching at her shirt, freed it from her clothing, and leveraged it to spin Claudia around, pressing her face-first into the shelving and holding her there with the full weight of her body.

“Now you listen to me,” Helena snarled, lips brushing against the shell of Claudia’s ear. “It is patently unfair for you to lambast me with these accusations when nobody bloody well told me that any of this was happening. I didn’t know her cancer had come back. I would give anything to have been here. _Anything._ ”

Claudia loosed an incredulous laugh. “Ha, right. What, you would have shown up with your kid on your hip? Like, ‘Sure, Myka, I’ll be right there, just as soon as I change his—'"

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, bringing my son into this,” Helena hissed. “You think I didn’t notice that Myka’s communication faded off shortly after he was born?”

“Does Nate know his son is named after a woman you used to fuck?” Claudia spat back.

“Why, you—“

“Wolcott Mykah, Helena? I hope for his sake he’s the coolest damn kid in his middle school.”

In a flood of fury, Helena released Claudia’s wrist and took three steps back, shaking, fearful that if she failed to put distance between them she might actually do Claudia harm.

“Myka and I could never have worked out, no matter what we felt for each other," Helena said softly, menacingly, as Claudia turned to face her. "She couldn't be happy away from the Warehouse, and I couldn't find happiness near it. I named my son after two of the finest people I have ever known, and if he has half of Wolly’s charisma, if he has a fraction of Myka’s intelligence or heart or passion, then he’ll do just fine in middle school and every day before and after.”

Claudia’s mouth twisted into a smirk. She tilted her head back and rubbed her hands, fingers spread, over her face. Exasperated. “If there is a God—“

“An absurd turn of phrase,” Helena quipped instantly. “If there were a God, we would still have Myka.”

Claudia raised her hands in the air in front of her defensively— _okay, fine_. “Whatever. I just hope your son has a fraction of Myka’s heart because that will definitely get him further than inheriting all of yours.”

Helena recoiled as if she’d been physically hit, arms curling across her torso protectively, air fleeing her lungs. For several moments, she could do nothing but blink absently back at Claudia, grief, rage, and defeat warring one another for dominance in her chest.

“Do you accuse me of not knowing how to give love?” she asked, finally, tentatively.

“Just saying, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it should have been put back in bronze before it had the chance to break Myka’s heart,” Claudia said evenly, in measured syllables, slowly walking toward Helena until they stood face to face. Helena couldn’t help but feel they stood like boxers about to touch gloves.

Helena’s eyes narrowed. “Claudia. I have loved a great many people in my long life. I loved you, for your spark and your intellect and, perhaps ironically, for your ferocious loyalty.” She thought, for a moment, that she detected a flicker of softness breaking through Claudia’s gaze, but she persevered, determined to finish her thought. “But with the exception of my daughter and my son, I have loved _nobody_ the way I still love Myka Bering.” She couldn’t help the way her voice cracked; she barely managed to tamp down the grief that threatened to bubble up from her chest.

Claudia’s nostrils flared, lips parting into an incredulous almost-smile, and she shook her head. With no forewarning she grabbed Helena by both shoulders again, pivoted her to face the hospital bed and shoved her toward it with such force that Helena stumbled, catching herself on the top railing of the cold metal footboard. Before she could right herself, Claudia was pressed against her back, thighs to thighs, breasts to shoulderblades, one arm wrapped around her midsection, pinning their bodies together. Claudia’s face reappeared in her peripheral vision, over her shoulder, and her other hand abruptly tangled itself in Helena’s hair and jerked, lifting Helena’s gaze to stare at the pillow, its guilty indentation, the hollow of the mattress where Myka had rested.

“Would you have loved her, HG, when she was lying here?” the word accentuated with a tug on her hair, the phrase uttered through gritted teeth. Helena set her jaw. She wouldn’t play this game. If it made Claudia feel better to manhandle her, then she’d allow it, but she wouldn’t play into any attempts to belittle her feelings about Myka.

“Would you have loved her when her hair fell out and her face swelled up from the steroids?” Claudia’s lips brushed her ear, her voice rough, hoarse.

“Would you have helped with the bedpans and the sponge baths? Would you have read to her on the days she was too weak to hold a book? Would you have been patient with her when the morphine made her forget things and it made her frustrated and confused?” Helena felt the tears pooling in her eyes and she let her lids drop closed. Claudia’s hand had drifted downward from her waist, fisting itself around Helena’s waistband at the button. She jerked her grip again, startling Helena’s eyes back open, forcing her to stare at the damned hospital bed until the rough weave of the blanket began to wobble and dive in front of her eyes.

“Would you have smuggled Alexander Bogdanov’s transfusion needle over from the Warehouse and begged her to take ten years off your lifespan? Pete did, and I got in on it. We both said we’d gladly live ten years less if it meant she could have twenty more. But she was too—too goddamn noble to take it.” Claudia’s words were hot and harsh in Helena’s ears, breath ghosting across her cheek, and suddenly Helena wondered if this was what it felt like to drown, to feel your lungs suck in water because they’re desperate for air.

“You have no idea,” Helena gasped, before she could stop herself. “So long as I knew my son would be cared for, I would have given her every day I had left on this earth.”

“You’re so full of shit, Helena.”

Helena opened her mouth, wanted to retort _fuck off_ , wanted to ask _why_ , wanted to say _I don’t understand _,__ wanted to say _ __Darling, let’s talk about this_ , __but she could tell Claudia wouldn’t respond well to any of those. 

She counted four ways she could throw Claudia off of her right now.

“I know why this is the room you walked into,” Claudia said, her voice still lower than it had been. “I mean, you couldn’t have known this was where the hospice set her up. And I heard you walk in. Your footsteps. You didn’t wander around. You walked straight in here.”

Helena’s eyes flicked to the side, to the wall of bookcases, to that spot on the wall of bookcases. Claudia’s eyes followed her gaze, even as Helena could feel Claudia’s hand moving at her waistband.

“So that’s the spot, then? That’s where you two did it.” Claudia’s wrist makes two quick moves and the front of Helena’s pants are undone, button and zipper hanging open.

Helena still counts four ways she could free herself from Claudia’s grip, and another six ways she could disable the girl immediately thereafter. But she doesn’t. For one thing, Myka would be furious. For another, she is starting to feel like this—whatever this is—is something Claudia needs, and she knows Claudia has a history of needing things that nobody is willing to give.

So perhaps Helena will give this to her.

Her gaze is still fixed to that spot, the seam between the first and second cases from the back, left corner. Then Claudia’s voice, again: “Her room’s archived now, of course. She never quite told me you two got it on in here, but I figured it out based on a few things she said under the morphine. Only room in the B&B outside of your bedrooms where you guys ever screwed.”

On that last word, Claudia’s hand slid inside Helena’s underwear, two fingers slipping between her labia and pinching her clit _hard_.

“Claudia—“ Helena’s grip tightened on the metal frame of the hospital bed. There were still four ways she could disable Claudia, right now, in seconds.

“What? You going to throw me off, too? Shove me away just like you did to her?” Claudia tugged Helena’s clit again. “If you want me to stop, just say so. I’ll stop and we’ll walk out of here and never see each other again.” She shifted her hand a little and began stroking Helena now, using the groove between her extended index and middle fingers. “But here’s what I think. I think you came to remember her in this room because you fucked her in here. Or did she fuck you?”

Helena’s nostrils flared. She remembered, vividly, the red marks left on her back by that seam in the bookcases. Myka had gripped the shelf above Helena’s shoulder for leverage as she’d pressed two fingers into her, Helena's leg hooked over Myka hip, teeth latched onto her earlobe.

Claudia snickered. “Of course she did you. Selfless Myka.” And her fingers were still working Helena’s clit, slightly harder now. “I think you came in here to remember her and I’m going to help you relive the moment. I’m going to get you off in here so you can call up old memories. And if you mix ‘em with some new ones, so much the better.”

Claudia’s hand wrenched itself free from Helena’s hair and Helena felt a rush of pain in her scalp as the pressure released. Then there were fingers on her breast, over her shirt, pressing hard into the soft skin, palm firm against her nipple.

“You and Myka ever play doctor, HG? She ever play patient for you?”

“Claudia,” Helena said, a hint of desperation this time. Her gaze fixed, again, to that hollow groove down the center of the bed in front of her and she imagined Myka—her Myka, with long, thick hair and skin that flushed at the slightest provocation—lying there.

She could stop Claudia easily, just with a word. But she didn’t. She wouldn’t. Because maybe, she thought, she did deserve this, to sacrifice her memories of Myka and her relationship with Claudia on the altar of that love she had refused to pursue, this friendship she abandoned. To turn this place into one where she could truly never return.

“Someone could walk in,” Helena tried. Her last attempt.

“No,” Claudia said, “They won’t.” Her fingers slid lower, circling HG’s opening gently—something Myka used to do—and Helena’s body responded, tremors of arousal shooting through her knees as they held her up.

“Pete’s worried he’ll turn to drink so Steve’s out keeping him busy,” Claudia said. “Artie and Abigail are at the Warehouse. And Myka’s family are all meeting with the lawyer about her will.”

As suddenly as they had appeared, Claudia’s hands were gone from Helena’s body. Then her thumbs worked their way inside her waistbands—trousers and underwear together—just behind her hips.

“Stop me now, Helena.” Claudia’s weight pressed hard against Helena’s back, and Helena felt the words as much as she heard them against the shell of her ear.

Helena’s eyes moved from the bed to the bookcase and back. Her hands still tightly fisted around the metal footboard. Then she let her lids drift closed, and she said nothing.

And then her clothes were bunched around her thighs and Claudia was inside her, three fingers from behind, and the first emotion Helena felt was grateful because for the first time since she’d gotten word of Myka’s death she could feel something other than grief and guilt and rage. She didn’t know what this feeling was but it was different, it was wrong, her nerve endings sang and her body danced and her mind remembered the feel and the taste of Myka, Myka, Myka. Claudia pressed into her hard and slow and deep enough to burn until Helena’s elbows gave out and she dropped her forehead to the back of one clenched fist at the foot of the bed. Claudia’s body bent over hers, their torsos still pressed together as they rocked. Her free hand took hold of Helena’s collar and jerked it aside and then there were teeth, harsh against her skin at the base of her neck, and when the pain in her body matched the pain in her soul something combusted and she came, harshly, against Claudia’s hand.

For a moment they stood there, held in place by an invisible force, until they both caught their breath. Claudia slipped her hand free and unceremoniously dragged it over the skin of Helena’s ass as she backed away. Helena’s knuckles cracked as she loosened their whitened grip on the footboard. She straightened her clothes as she stood, and by the time she turned to face Claudia, only her slightly disheveled hair gave away that anything, at all, had happened.

“Well, I hope you feel better after that,” Helena said. She wasn’t sure how much she meant it.

Claudia closed her eyes briefly and shook her head, incredulous.

“You’re a goddamn piece of work, H.G. Wells,” she said.

Helena cocked one eyebrow and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well,” she said, “what happens now?”

“What happens now is, I need to go take a shower and then I need to go find Pete and Steve. So I’m going to go upstairs, and by the time I get back down here I want you gone. And then I never fucking see you again.”

Helena recoiled at the harshness of the words, and she felt herself suddenly—inexplicably—on the verge of tears. Long years of practice after Christina had made her an expert at suppressing that urge, so she did, again. Her hand found its way to her locket, and she met Claudia’s gaze. “Righty ho, then,” she said, with false cheeriness, letting a sad smile flit across her features.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had used that phrase. Too many strange looks in Boone had pushed it out of her lexicon. But here, back in Univille, these slivers of her past continued to slip free.

Claudia turned and walked back toward the hallway. At the door, she stopped, hand resting on the doorframe. Her shoulders were tense, and Helena got the distinct impression she was trying to make a decision. Finally, she turned back around, and reached to retrieve something from her jacket’s inside pocket.

“The only reason I came back here tonight was because you disappeared after the service and I had a hunch this was where you'd be. Myka asked me to give you this.” She held out an envelope, blank but for the word _Helena_ on the front, in Myka’s flowing cursive. “Just to be clear: I’m giving this to you because she asked me to, not because I give a crap about how you feel right now. And I damn well hope I don’t regret it.”

Helena accepted the envelope with both hands. By the time she could tear her gaze from the rounded letters of her name, Claudia was gone.

Shakily, Helena crossed the two steps to the bed and sat down on the edge. One hand made its way to the place where her neck met her shoulder, to the mark left there by Claudia’s teeth, and rubbed. It would surely bruise, but by the time she got back to Wisconsin, it should have faded enough not to be identifiable as a bite mark. She would, she hoped, be able to avert having to come up with a story to tell Nate. Add this whole incident to the long list of omissions she kept from him about life at the Warehouse.

She turned the envelope convulsively in her fingers for a long moment before screwing her courage to the sticking place and, carefully, tearing it open.

The letter was hand-written on several sheets of white computer paper. Helena couldn’t remember the last time she’d received a handwritten letter. With a deep breath, she began to read.

  


_Dear Helena,_

_I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve restarted this letter. You can’t possibly imagine how intimidating it is to write something for one of history’s greatest authors._

_How do you say goodbye to the person who knows you better than anyone else? I still wish I knew, but the time has come for me to try, regardless. It might seem a funny thing for me to say to you: how could you still be the person who knows me best when we haven’t spoken in years? But you are, Helena. You are. And I hope, with this letter, to make sure you understand that._

_I owe you two apologies. First: I am incredibly sorry for having fallen out of your life. I am under no pretense that the fault for that lies with anyone but me. The reason is simple, and maybe a little pathetic: I had to get over you, Helena. I fell in love with you when we were lovers, and I never really stopped loving you. Even when I hated you after Yellowstone, I couldn’t stop loving you. After we found you again, in Wisconsin, I told myself that having you as friend was better than not having you in my life at all. But in retrospect, there was always a part of me (a big part) that hoped that maybe, if I was patient enough, you’d change your mind._

_When little Wolly was born, he was so beautiful. But he broke my heart a little, by no fault of his own, because he forced me to come to terms with the fact that you were truly settled, and that wanting you to come back to me was selfish._

_As long as you were in my life, I couldn’t move on. So I did what I had to: I allowed our friendship to lapse. It was the right decision. It made it possible for me to start living for the present, again, instead of the past or some imagined hypothetical future. I hope you can forgive me for that._

_I also hope you can forgive me for choosing not to tell you when the cancer came back. I thought about it for a long time, I’m still not sure it was the right decision. Heaven (or whatever) knows I would love to see you again. But it was another decision made selfishly._

_Here’s the thing: as I sit here writing this, I’ve been at home in hospice care for a week. I may have a few weeks left. I may have a few months. I don’t know. I do know that I’ve done ten rounds with each of a half-dozen different chemo drugs, none of which worked. The indignity of chemo is that it kills your body while it tries to kill the cancer. It’s made me feel sicker than the disease ever did, and I look and feel terrible most of the time. I’m still basically bald. My stomach is horribly distended—it’s a chemo side effect. It looks gross and it hurts. I have skin like a vampire and the muscles in my arms and legs have atrophied. I lost feeling and use of my left leg ten days ago, thanks to a tumor in my hip. I can’t get around without a wheelchair and someone to push me. I can’t bathe myself. I’m relying on the people I love to dump out bedpans for me. That was especially mortifying at first, but I’m getting used to it now—and I don’t know which feeling is worse._

_You used to compliment the sparkle in my eyes, but I worry that if you saw me now, you’d find that it was gone._

_This, Helena, is why I never contacted you, and this is why you are still the person who knows me best. Because you haven’t seen me like this. You saw me sick during my first cancer fight, but honestly, this doesn’t compare. This body I live in right now—it isn’t me. This body is more cancer than me. Selfishly, I wanted there to be somebody who remembered me as I think of myself: energetic. Athletic. Fantastic hair. Full of life, in every sense._

_And I wanted that to be you._

_So I’m hoping I can leave you with a few requests._

_First: forgive me. I hope Wolly can grow up knowing that his namesake always loved him, even if she didn’t know how to show it when she had the chance. I often look at the pictures of him you’ve posted online. He’s a devilishly handsome fellow—just like his mother._

_Second: remember me, sometimes. Remember me solving puzzles with you, remember me staying up late in the library with you, talking about books. Remember me when I was strong and full of life, when you hauled me into the air with that damned grappler of yours. Remember me when I was holding suspects at gunpoint. Remember me when I was holding you at gunpoint and imagining other, much more interesting, excuses for pinning you to a wall. If it’s not too awkward, remember me occasionally as (I hope) an attentive and passionate lover._

_Third: This may be an odd one, but I’m worried about Claudia. Steve is Pete’s partner now, and I think he’s going to be the one in charge of helping Pete stay sober. Claudia has been here, training to become Caretaker, so we’ve been spending a lot of time together. We’ve become close. She knows about you and me. Pete knows, too, but all he knows is that it happened. Claudia’s heard some of the stories. I told her about how you snuck into my hotel room the night after that spontaneous combustion case. She said she wasn’t sure if it was more gallant or creepy, which I thought was pretty funny._

_She’s been taking me on drives. The landscape around here is so beautiful in the fall. Yesterday, we went to that scenic overlook a few miles down the road—the one where you can see the Warehouse from above. I took you there once, remember? I came so close to telling you I loved you, there. I’ve asked for half my ashes to be scattered from that overlook. The other half will go back to Colorado Springs with my parents._

_Anyway. Claudia talks about you sometimes. She talks about how angry she is that you left, that you haven’t been here for me. I’ve tried to explain why I never asked you to come, but she keeps saying that’s not the point. I finally realized: she doesn’t want you here for me. She wants you here for her. She’s only angry because it’s easier to be angry than afraid. It’s certainly easier to be angry than to grieve._

_Of all people, I know you know the importance of coping properly with fear and grief._

_So I’m hoping you can reach out to her. Make her a part of your life, even from afar, in Wisconsin. I have asked her to contact you about my funeral, when the time comes, and I’m going to ask her to give you this letter, to force her to interact with you, even if only minimally. She may resist at first, but persist. She’ll come around. I’m sure of it._

_Okay. I think that’s everything._

_Thank you, Helena, for everything you have given me in your friendship. Thank you for challenging me, for encouraging me, for pressing me to think beyond the limits of what I believed to be possible for myself and for the world._

_This feels so incredibly selfish, but I need to say it anyway: you have been the greatest love of my life. You still are, after all these years._

_With all my love,_

_Myka_

_PS: Almost forgot—I made you a beneficiary of my life insurance. It won’t be that much money, but I was hoping you could put it toward college for Adelaide and Wolly. I know you’ve got plenty of your own money so it’s not like they’ll need the extra, but I’d like them to have something from me._

 

When Helena put the letter down, she felt numb. She folded the pages, neatly, and put them back into the envelope, which she placed carefully into the inside pocket on her jacket. She walked into the kitchen and found some paper towel, which she dampened and used to wipe away the smeared remains of sex on her skin, inside her pants. Then she washed her hands, and dried them on a hand towel.

The sound of water rushing through old pipes above her head stopped abruptly, indicating that Claudia has finished her shower. Helena walked slowly upstairs. She identified Claudia’s bathroom from the sound of the blow-drier inside. She leaned against the wall opposite the door, and waited.

When Claudia opened that door, several minutes later, she was dressed somewhat more like the Claudia Helena remembered: dark, fitted jeans, a T-shirt for a band whose name Helena faintly recognized, and a battered denim jacket. Less jewelry than she had worn when she was younger, but the same fondness for bold makeup. She was in her stocking feet and held Myka’s boots in her hand. She seemed smaller without them—much more so than the two-inch heels should have made her.

Her eyes narrowed when she saw Helena standing there. “I thought I told you to—“

Before she could finish her sentence, Helena had taken a step forward and put her hands on the outsides of Claudia’s shoulders. Claudia shook them off, but Helena put them back. Then she took one more step closer and wrapped her arms around the younger woman, as tightly as she could manage.

“I can be here for you,” Helena murmured. “Let me be here for you.”

Claudia fought, fingers grasping at Helena’s clothing to push her away, but Helena clung with all the strength she had left, pinning Claudia’s upper arms to her torso.

And then, as abruptly as a flipped switch, Helena heard the thud of boots hitting the floor, and Claudia crumpled against her, sobbing, fingers wrapped around the lapels of Helena’s jacket. Together, they fell back against the wall, and Helena lowered them both to the floor, as carefully as she could. And there, with Claudia’s tears hot against her neck, Helena finally let herself crack. Everything she had been trying not to feel rushed through the breach in the dam, and they were both crying freely now, shuddering against the old plaster walls.

Here she was, in that moment she had so desperately tried to avoid, where it became impossible to look away from her grief.

So she stared it in the face, with Claudia taking deep, shaking breaths in her arms and her own eyes and nose running shamelessly, and realized, with a level of relief, that she would survive this.

They would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> The biggest challenge with this piece was making sure it read as consensual. Even dub-con tends to make me squeamish, let alone non-con. Would love your comments or critiques on that front.


End file.
